Whose voice is the loudest? Investigating the effects of parliamentary and public contestation on EU trade negotiations

In recent years, ever more concerns have been raised by the general public and politicians in the European Parliament (EP) regarding the impact of trade policy on the environment, human rights or corporate social responsibility, among others. In consequence, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have seemed to become more politicised and contested. The failure of the negotiations about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), for instance, cannot be explained without taking into account the fierce public resistance. Similar rejection can currently be witnessed in regard to Mercosur. While there seems to be an evident explanation for why contestation of trade agreements increased, the impact of this development on the negotiations and their outcomes is unclear. We thus pose the question: Under which conditions do public and parliamentary contestation lead to the failure of EU trade negotiations? We draw on two different streams of literature: the one on contestation (see e.g. De Wilde, Koopmans, Merkel, & Zürn, 2019) and the one on correspondence (see e.g. Cohen, 1997). Firstly, as we are interested in the contestation of European policy, we take into account the work of scholars dealing with the conceptualization and analysis of patterns of contestation of European integration. Frameworks on the contestation among European parties (Hoogue & Marks, 2009; Chryssogelos 2015) and member states (Börzel & Zürn, 2020) have already been developed. Public support for and contestation of EU politics have commonly been explained by the factors of identity and politicization (see Hobolt & De Vries, 2016). In connection to the contestation literature, Hobolt and Klemmensen (2008) have found higher levels of political contestation to be linked with higher responsiveness of executives. What has, however, remained under-investigated is the connection between the different levels of contestation, particularly the interaction between contestation within the EP and the public. Due to this lacking state of research, we draw on correspondence arguments as a second stream of literature. Scholars in this field have concentrated on the public-policy nexus with a particular focus on the responsiveness of governments or political elites to public opinion. Combining the two, we develop our own argument on the relationship between public and parliamentary contestation in the EU. We argue for the two spheres to be highly interconnected. Like Hobolt and Klemmensen (2009), we expect public opinion to be captured in debates in the EP, especially when public contestation is high. Expanding their argument, we do not assume the relationship to be one-sided but argue for spill-over effects in both directions, with parliamentary debates impacting the public discourse, as well. Therefore, we expect the two arenas to possibly reinforce themselves and accordingly possess the power to make political initiatives undoable when contestation is too high in both spheres. We test our argument by employing a cross-case comparison and tracing the impact of public and parliamentary contestation on the negotiations of TTIP, MERCOSUR, JEFTA and CETA. Through this research design, we aim at gathering insights on the impacts of contestation of EU trade agreements in general.